What're your thoughts on when metal goes mainstream? How would you define a band or project being 'mainstream' to begin with? Would love to hear your opinions on this? Be sure to let me know down below!!!!!!! But for now, cheers, rock on, stay heavy and have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day or night, depending on when you see this!!!!!!! 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

I feel like for many years metal tried to stay away from the mainstream as much as possible but recently there has been much more acceptance to being mainstream because it no longer means that you are a slave to a company.

Has it been? Absolutely; certainly back when terrestrial radio was a much greater force than it is now, it was much easier to define mainstream success using that as a metric; hair metal and nu metal were very much mainstream and were part of the playlists of regular rock stations. Metallica from the Black Album onward, certainly. Ozzy's solo material. Black Sabbath and Judas Priest were classic rock radio staples. I think the most obvious criterion for whether a given metal artist qualifies as mainstream or not is whether they have a significant fanbase outside of metalheads that isn't just musicians. (Because there are a lot of guitarists and drummers who aren't metalheads as such who'll listen because of the instrumental performances.) If a large percentage of the audience aren't specifically genre fans and aren't there to hear displays of musicianship, then I would consider that to have mainstream appeal.

on a win streak again I’m on time for the vid and got some crangrape

I’m all for metal getting mainstream appeal, sometimes the said mainstream bands are kind of bland (I mean bands like ice nine kills, bad omens, and newer architects, but that’s just my opinion) but there are better bands that are getting mainstream like bring me the horizon, I wish bands like periphery were mainstream though, cause their album called juggernaut alpha would definitely fit mainstream music

nice video mate ;)

What a nice discussion on the definition of “mainstream” It definitely needs to be had in an era where everyone is becoming increasingly isolated in their respective musical rabbit hole

Nice Shinedown shirt!

I think a few things that help make a band mainstream (though you don't necessarily have to meet all of them to be mainstream) are; Longevity: Examples are Metallica, Black Sabbath & Judas Priest who are all recognised by the masses due to having been around for so long. Ease of access: Bad Omens, Ghost & Slipknot are examples of this due to having their work on multiple platforms like Spotify & KZfaq. Exposure to the masses: Linkin Park, Deftones, Evanescence & Paramore are examples of this due to being used on tiktok videos, in movies and continual airplay on mainstream radio stations. Their are more things but I think those 3 are pretty good starting points for what makes a band mainstream.

I don't think it ever has been mainstream and it probaby never will be but I'm not against it. A lot of people want metal to stay underground, and tbh it was never really that either except for maybe at the very beginning. Some elitists are mad because metal is closer to being mainstream now more than ever (with Metallica being in stranger things and fortnite for example) but it hasn't quite become that yet. If you look at a high school class of 25 kids, 1 or 2 of them might listen to metal, meanwhile half of them listen to pop and almost all listen to rap. And honestly, I think it's only downhill from here. Sure metal has been gaining popularity but all the best known bands are growing old, sure they're still making music and doing shows but not at the pace that they used to and the new guys are good but to hold up the reputation of metal as a genre you need to be a lot better than just good. Besides that would be going against all the progress we've made so far, because normies know metal for bands like the big four, and if any of these new guys were gonna get recognition like that it would be way late into their career and the cycle would continue, with metal always being almost mainstream but not quite.

Because of TikTok (social media, internet), Spotify (streaming services), fragmentation, accessibility; i don't think we'll care that if metal is mainstream anymore but at the same time that the popularity & fanbase is growing especially with younger generation.

Even when there are mainstream heavy metal bands there will be thousand more underground heavy metal bands

To answer ur question, yes it has

I think there's a difference between mainstream music and mainstream culture. Allow me to elaborate, mainstream music consists of very specific elements that are typically found in very specific genres(pop, rap, hip hop, country to an extent, etc), and perhaps more importantly are targeted at a very specific audience: the lowest common denominator, as in the average joe who mostly listens to music in the background rather than dedicated listening, has no 'proper' listening equipment(good speakers/headphones, etc) and 0 or very little musical knowledge. This is the reason why this type of music is the most popular, as mathematically the lowest common denominator catches the largest amount of people(out of the general population that is). It's also why this type of music tends to be frowned upon by purists of whichever other musical genre, from classical to metal and everything in between. Now, that's not to say that these pop artists don't have musical knowledge, skills, etc, themselves, far from it, I was only talking about their target audience. Mainstream culture on the other hand involves other cultural activities that aren't directly part of the music industry. Sure, the music industry is obviously part of the mainstream culture large, but I'm talking specifically about the non music industry parts of it, whether it's sports, movies and TV shows, etc. This distinction becomes relevant when asking whether metal has ever been in the mainstream. As far as the music mainstream, no never. Metal bands, even the largest ones like Metallica, have never gotten anywhere close to the popularity of the top pop artists, and are of course targeting a very different audience. I know monthly Spotify listeners is far from the best metric, but it does give at least a decent ball park. There is absolutely no comparison between say Metallica and their over 26 million monthly listeners(which is huge by metal standards) and say Taylor Swift's over 97 million(nearly 4 times as many) or Katy Perry's over 58 million(twice as many) listeners, and these statistics are heavily biased in favor of Metallica mind you as most of the people who listen to Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, etc, do so on the radio and other places, not Spotify(lowest common denominator remember...?). However, if you were to take the total amount of listeners for Metallica and for Taylor Swift and divide them by the number of overall listens(to every single song in their Spotify catalog) you'll see that the Metallica listeners listen to many more songs than the Taylor Swift listeners. Just goes to show the differences in the target audience for the 2 groups. However in terms of non musical cultural mainstream, the fact that you can hear songs like Enter Sandman or even Master of Puppets playing during NBA matches, in the stadiums themselves, is the definition of being in the cultural mainstream. Similarly a variety of metal musicians made various appearances on late night shows and other popular non musical mainstream contents. I didn't even mention Doom 2016 and 2019 yet nor all the different films and TV shows that have metal songs in their soundtracks and many other such examples. So how/why does this distinction exist? Because there are different overlaps between the different groups. For example you limit the discussion to only sports fans rather than the general population at large, you'll see that the subgroup of mainstream listeners among them(while still probably the largest group) is smaller(relatively speaking) to that of the general population. That is to say there is a larger overlap between sports fans(or any other subgroup for that matter like film goers, car enthusiasts, outdoors types, etc) and the various other musical genres that aren't part of the mainstream. Since these all these groups are culturally important, these other musical genres gained disproportionally larger cultural attention due to said differences in overlap. Another thing to remember is that the era difference, or more precisely the effects of the internet on consumption as a whole. Back in the 70s, 80s and even 90s, the internet was still in its infancy and not nearly as widespread as it is today, with KZfaq for example not being a thing yet, let alone social media as a concept. Technically My Space did exist and sort of was social media, or more precisely the precursor of social media. When we think of social media today we think of the post Facebook era. The point being that back before the early 2000s 'underground' bands were actually underground, as in only having dozens or hundreds at most, fans, mostly in a few nearby local scenes. These days you can have an 'underground' band with hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify and they're still considered underground. That is to say the standards have completely changed, and as music becomes ever more accessible, the amount of people who discover one or more of the many non mainstream genres and fall in love with them is growing ever larger. That is to say that maybe(hopefully) sometime in the foreseeable future, appealing to the lowest common denominator will cease to be the winning strategy to maximize appeal, at which point the whole concept of what mainstream is will drastically change. We're not there yet, but the early signs are already showing, with the differences between mainstream and non mainstream bands, in terms of numbers, are growing ever closer. Lastly, before metal can ever be considered as anything but a niche, it first has to fully detach itself from rock. Even today, many people including musicians, still view metal as a sub-genre of rock music. As long as this is the case metal will never truly become mainstream. Heck rock itself isn't really mainstream, so a 'sub-genre' of rock by definition is a niche within a niche. Personally I don't agree with this view point but it's still the prevailing one so I can't just brush it off and ignore it. Similarly, until we stop talking about 'rock charts', 'rock radio stations', etc, and begin talking about the overall charts and radio, there is no way for metal, or rock for that matter, to truly be included in the mainstream.

There are definitely some mainstream metal bands, I mean look at Metallica, everyone knows Metallica. But for metal itself, like the culture of it, I don't really think it has, especially not the more extreme styles.

Good question. Most metal bands are trying to reach “that place” when they write. Call it what you will - touching god, reach the ether (I heard some writers call it that, yes) some can connect with a few (which is fantastic) and some wind up going mainstream. My 2 cents. If that makes any… sense 😜

In the grand scheme of things, I think Metal as a whole will not be fully mainstream. Even today, the genre still isn't fully respected or acknowledged. It's only when it gets featured in something else that's really mainstream that people talk about it but then the 15 minutes is quickly over I.E. Master of Puppets being used in the Season 4 finale of Stranger Things.

When i think of metal i think of Possessed's Seven Churches and Hellhammer's Apocalyptic Raids. So, no. I don't think so.

Metal was mainstream in the 70s and 80s

Idk

Here’s how I look at it; if a high enough concentration Normies embrace it, it’s mainstream.

I mean Alice in Chains was pretty mainstream, as were Limp Bizkit and Guns n Roses in their says, and of course Poison back in the 80s, there's always been metal bands that have broken through to the mainstream but as a whole genre metal has always been somewhat underground and probably always will be

I have been arguing that it is counter culture 😂.

For me, metal became mainstream when Dee Snyder testified before the U.S. House of Representatives .

Metallica korn limp bizkit staind tool slipknot